Nottingham Off Road Duathlon

The final event in the three race One Step Beyond 'Midlands Off Road' Duathlon series which had been ongoing since early October. With finishes at the Clumber & Sherwood Pines events, I headed to Holme Pierre Pont standing 12th in my age group and hoping to sneak up a few places with a positive result.

The course would be a 5km run which would be mostly off road, the bike was two laps of HPP lake and all off road, capped off with a single lap 2.5km effort.

With a good result seen at Winterton last week I was raring to go and have a final blast on the cross bike. Our start would be 9.30am and we were pre-warned to turn up early as there had been a lot of rain and this meant that the usual car park was too boggy to use ! ( This was clearly not a good sign for the course! )

Run 1 24.51
It's been a while since I've run a near 25 minute 5k, but the truth was I couldn't have gone any faster ! Some of the course was boggy, the normal road shoes on it was as slippery as shite, and there was one part where I just had to stop as was sliding all over the shop ! Mile splits were 7.40, 7.32 & ?.
NB Think the course might have been long.

Bike 49.58
Sub 50 get in ! After a slow T1 @ 1.48, it was a joy to get out on the bike and lap up the muddiest course of the year so far. I've come on in leaps and bounds over the past few months of crossing and enjoyed this part immensely ! I didn't get overtaken and took bags of places back following the first run. Seemed to go on forever, and was surprised that it was less than 50 minutes, Back into T2 with a smile on my face !

Run 2 12.56
Saw 7.47 as a mile split during this 2nd run and thought to myself that's not too shabby being as it hurt ! Had a sticky point back at the slippy as shit section and have a nice selection of bramble scraches as a bonus race memento. Happy to finish strongly for a good placing and just outside a 1.30 finish - that will be the dance with the bramble bush for you !